37 Metaphors for ocean

From July to October, at any moment, the sapphire skies may turn black with thunder-clouds; the Eden-like landscapes turned into scenes of ruin and desolation; the rippling ocean that lovingly laves their shores becomes a roaring monster trying to swallow them.

Truly here 'The spirits of our fathers Might start from every wave; For the deck it was their field of fame, And ocean was their grave,' and ask us: What have you done with these islands, which we won for you with precious blood?

[60] "It is clear that matter really does consist of minute particles which do not touch," and even these we must conceive of as "corks as it were floating in an ocean of ether, causing waves in it by their own proper movement," an explanation which loses some of its helpfulness when we remember that the ethereal ocean is only a mathematical entity.

In this way the ocean is a great giver.

The Atlantic Ocean is only a mill-pond.

In what Ocean are the Sandwich Islands?

Our oceans are our great drawbacks.

One would imagine that the ocean is too boisterous an element for the Muses, whose darling wish is for ease and retirement; yet, we find him amidst the roaring of winds and waves, open his Poem with these soothing lines.

But with the Cabots and their followers, Frobisher and Gilbert and Drake and Hawkins, all this was changed; once more the ocean became the highway of our national progress and adventure, and by virtue of our shipping we became competitors for the dominion of the earth.

The ocean in his view, not by its vastness, its unfathomable depths, and its limitless extent, becomes an image of deity, by its unchangeable character!

A start in that direction has been made; whereas not so very long ago the immense ocean was one wide waste of waters, traversed from both points only once a year.

Such is their defiance of dangers when liberty is to be won, that old ocean, with its wild storms, and fierce monsters, and its yawning deep, and even the superadded terrors of armed vessels ever hovering around the island, are barriers altogether ineffectual to prevent escape.

The broad ocean is the place, after all.

The ocean was a glittering blue, an intense, brilliant azure, level save for the slight swaying of the surface, which every little space showed a flag of white.

"The German Ocean is the eastern boundary of England, and many of our most beautiful streams fall into its waters.

A troubled Ocean, to a Man who sails upon it, is, I think, the biggest Object that he can see in motion, and consequently gives his Imagination one of the highest kinds of Pleasure that can arise from Greatness.

As not only the real Keats, but also the figurative Adonais, died in Rome, the ocean cannot be a feature in the immediate scene; it lies in the not very remote distance, felt rather than visible to sight.

In the sociology and geography and economics of the Orient this Pacific Ocean was the great common denominator.

You shall show them that their ocean is no protection, that the iron hand of our Kaiser is far-reaching.

Beyond the three-mile limit, the ocean is "common ground," belonging not to one nation but to all.

Distant countries have been made neighbors; the Atlantic Ocean has become a narrow frith, and the Old World and the New shake hands across it; the East and the West look in at each other's windows.

The German Ocean becomes sea once more; the north-western Alps sink again to a level far lower even than their present one; only to rise again, but not so high as before; sea-beaches and sea-shells fill many of our lower valleys; whales by hundreds are stranded (as in the Farnham vale) where is now dry land.

I am a seaman, Sir; and though the ocean is my home, I never venture on it without sufficient footing.

That ocean, which seems to be placed in the midst of lands, to make an eternal separation between them, is, on the contrary, the common rendezvous of all the people of the earth, who could not go by land from one end of the world to the other without infinite fatigue, tedious journeys, and numberless dangers.

Both the ocean and the ship were muddy shades of gray.

37 Metaphors for  ocean